"You know, it’s tough to really summate your favorite movies, and it changes so often based on your vibe and things like that. When I w­as thinking about it, I was trying to think of what are the movies that continually show up in the top 10. And I landed on The Bicycle Thief – or Bicycle Thieves; sometimes people say “thief,” sometimes say “thieves.” [Director Vittorio] De Sica’s Bicycle Thief is like a north star project for me. First of all, it’s arguably the greatest film in the father-son series. It’s one of the bits of neo-realist masterpiece. The way that De Sica aligned it with his casting and the themes of his movie is always an inspiration. The fact that he saw Lamberto Maggiorani at the audition, that he showed up with his son – he’s a factory worker who showed up with his son – he immediately said, “Oh, this is the guy who needs to play the character.” And the fact that he cast the kid, Enzo, off of the street while they were filming, who was selling flowers for his father. The fact that De Sica had the vision to try to blur the lines, starting with casting and then, towards the climax of the movie he shot, he modeled his production around the release of a soccer match. So that he knew he was going to have hundreds upon thousands, thousands upon thousands of people leaving the stadium at the same time. And he would shoot around. He’s using reality as the fabric of his fiction film. And that, to me, makes it an ultimate masterpiece of all time."

"It’s not an obvious pairing but someone asked me if I wanted to do it and if I’d like to work with her and sent me a couple of her albums. When I heard them I was really blown away with them. I thought, ""this girl’s superb""! She came to my studio and we talked about for a while and she was a lovely girl, very sweet, and her voice is so amazing! So in tune! Beautiful quality and a lovely tone. And a beautiful plumage! [laughs] She was beautiful and I loved her voice and her pitch and her sense of timing was absolutely marvellous, you know? In fact, in her live show, sometimes her drummer is playing his bass drum to her left hand. Her hand’s like a drum machine, almost. Very tight, rhythmically. And I just love her voice. We laid down four or five tracks with her on piano and sometimes she wanted to do it all at once and I’m going, ""hmmm… Don’t do that! Because I’ve got to separate it again and it’s almost impossible to get the separation.’ I wanted to have the complete control that I like; I like total separation and control over the stuff so I can make it sound good. And we did it like that, just one track, and then we did them all separate so she played the piano parts separate and did the vocals separate standing up at a vocal mic and I just really enjoyed it, you know? I still listen back to those songs and I think they’re great."